The first laptops to make use of the SpursEngine, a multimedia co-processor derived from the Cell chip that powers the PlayStation 3, will go on sale in Japan in July. Toshiba will launch its Qosmio G50 and F40 machines with the chip, which contains four of the "Synergistic Processing Elements" from the Cell Broadband Engine processor. The Cell chip used in the PlayStation 3 has eight of the SPE cores plus a Power PC main processor. The SPE cores perform the heavy number-crunching that makes the console's graphics so stunning. The SpursEngine SE1000 will work in much the same way in the laptops. The operating system will run on an Intel Core 2 Duo chip and the SpursEngine will be called on to handle processor-intensive tasks, such as processing of high-definition video. This arrangement means the laptop should be capable of some tricks that haven't been seen on machines until now.

I wouldn't be surprised if this was just an attempt to get this technology in the hands of developers who just want to play with cool technology. The more devs they can have working with such technology, the more some of them might bring it up with management in the companies they work for.

The consumer benefits mentioned in the summary were pretty weak - but getting this into the hands of the technically savvy, so they can do "tricks" seems like a pretty good way to promote the architecture - to get it into the hands of the development mavens if you will, without requiring those users to give up all their x86 computability (these can be frugal people).